The Institute for Japanese Studies and Department of History of Art present:
"Jomon Repotted"
Simon Kaner
University of East Anglia
Abstract: In the 20 years since the publication of Tatsuo Kobayashi’s Jōmon Reflections*, understanding of the societies that inhabited the Japanese archipelago between the appearance of pottery (about 16,000 years ago) to the adoption of rice farming (starting 2500 years ago) has undergone a considerable transformation, suggesting that the idea of the Jōmon period needs ‘repotting’. In this talk I will survey some of these developments, in particular the significance of ‘big data’ studies, advances in scientific techniques including ancient DNA, the inscription of 17 sites in northern Japan as UNESCO World Heritage, the new narratives about the Jōmon that developed as part of the Japan Heritage initiative and the rehabilitation of Jōmon people as (albeit fictive) ancestors to the modern Japanese. I will also reflect on the impact of exhibitions of Jōmon material culture in the UK, including dogū ceramic figures, flame pots, and stone circles. The talk will be structured around the forthcoming translation of Taniguchi Yasuhiro’s Introduction to the Archaeology of the Jōmon Period (入門縄文時代の考古学, 2019, Dōseisha), to be published later this year as a successor to Jomon Reflections, and look forward to the 150th anniversary of Edward Sylvester Morse’s investigations of the Omori shell mounds in 1877, which resulted in the formal identification of Jōmon pottery.
*Available as a free download from Oxbow Books https://openresearchlibrary.org/content/bf82da81-9b71-4b54-882a-42be78435c63
Professor Simon Kaner, MA (Cantab.) PhD, FSA, is Executive Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, where he is also the Head of the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage. He is Founding Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia. A Trustee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, he is an archaeologist specialising in the prehistory of Japan.
His recent publications include Leiko Ikemura: Usagi in Wonderland (ed. 2024), An Illustrated Companion to Japanese Archaeology (2nd ed. 2020), The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Europe and Japan (ed. 2021) and Japan and the World: artistic and cultural flows (ed. 2021). He is currently co-editing The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Korea and Japan. He is Co-Editor of the Japanese Journal of Archaeology.
Free and Open to the Public
If you require an accommodation, such as live captioning, to participate in this event, please contact EASC at easc@osu.edu. Requests made at least two weeks in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
